


this present grace

by goshemily



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Dom/sub Undertones, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Boot Kink, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 20:03:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3221642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goshemily/pseuds/goshemily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras shrugs. “Head wounds always bleed,” he says against Grantaire’s salt skin, flippant and the adrenaline quick fire in his veins. “What would you have me do?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	this present grace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Overnighter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Overnighter/gifts), [miss_begonia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_begonia/gifts), [harborshore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/harborshore/gifts), [barricadeur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/barricadeur/gifts), [Ark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ark/gifts), [acchikocchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/acchikocchi/gifts), [twofrontteethstillcrooked](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofrontteethstillcrooked/gifts), [clenster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clenster/gifts), [idiopathicsmile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/idiopathicsmile/gifts), [forgiveninasong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgiveninasong/gifts), [Lionsroar83](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lionsroar83/gifts), [rebeccabuck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebeccabuck/gifts), [shakespeareandpunk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shakespeareandpunk/gifts), [Terracotta_Oak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terracotta_Oak/gifts).



> This is for all the righteous babes in my life, for all those emails that light up the worst studying days.
> 
> Anything that's good in this story is because [mlle](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mlle) looked it over before I posted. Whatta babe. <3

“What were you thinking?” Grantaire asks. The anger in his voice is belied by the gentleness of his hand below the blood at Enjolras’s temple, but pressed against Enjolras in the alcove, the lines of his body are full of rage. Enjolras opens his mouth and Grantaire claps his palm square over it. “No,” he hisses, “you weren’t thinking. I know.”

Enjolras shrugs. “Head wounds always bleed,” he says against Grantaire’s salt skin, flippant and the adrenaline quick fire in his veins. “What would you have me do?”

Grantaire removes his hand and Enjolras misses the warmth in some small part of him but he repeats himself, not muffled now. Oratory is always his weakness.

“Not get in a fight at the opposite end of the station from where we’re docked,” Grantaire says, “if only because it proves you for the fool they say you are.” The window high in the hull lets in weak starlight, and it’s barely enough for Enjolras to see Grantaire’s face when he steps back, pulls a rag from his pocket. “No grease, I promise,” he says, and starts to clean the blood. He doesn’t hesitate, but there is a pause in the way his hand arches, holding the rag.

The ship is guaranteed for proper oxygen flow (or was, when it was built, decades and owners ago), and Jehan’s tiny garden of kitchen herbs keeps a ghost of life going through their ventilation, but watching Grantaire concentrate, Enjolras swears the air is getting thinner. That must be why his heart drums in his throat, why the universe has narrowed to the incarnadine rasp of Grantaire’s breath, quick and shallow.

“I hate that you do this,” he says finally, eyes hidden behind the dark curve of his lashes.

“I know.”

“It makes me want to –” a quick gesture with the now-red rag, helpless.

“Fight?”

“Keep you here.” 

Enjolras laughs. He can’t help it, though Grantaire’s mouth is bitter. “You, keep me here? How?”

“I’d like to be hurt your imagination is so poor,” Grantaire says, “but mine is certainly rich enough for us both.” He busies himself with folding the cloth, then looks at it with distaste. He is very obviously avoiding Enjolras’s gaze.

It probably means something, but Grantaire is ever foreign. His opaqueness is his sigil, his jokes both his sword and his shield.

Enjolras hates pretense. He observes almost detached as his own hand, thin and brown and resolute, reaches out and raises Grantaire’s chin.

There is nothing in all the galaxies so blue as Grantaire’s eyes.

“What am I not seeing?” Enjolras asks. “What do you imagine?”

Grantaire’s laugh is a startled angry thing. “You’d have me show you? Deep space is not the place to bare our souls, Enjolras. We’re trapped together for at least a week now; you know we won’t land until we’re somewhere safe.”

Unsaid is the smallness of the Musain. Whatever is brought up – whatever Grantaire thinks will make them wish to avoid each other – cannot be forgotten in a ship where no moment is truly private. Their alcove opens to a hallway, and down its too short length are the cockpit and his empty captain’s chair. Bahorel pilots with the true flaneur’s ready grace, and Enjolras can hear Feuilly and Courfeyrac charting their course.

“You followed me here,” he says. “I wanted a moment alone, and you came looking for an argument.” He’d longed to close his eyes against his own stupidity, just for a moment, but Grantaire never lets him lead unashamed. 

“You were bleeding from the head.”

“I have before.”

“I know.”

Enjolras leans against the metal wall behind him. It’s warm, the heat of the engine dispelled through steam pipes as a guard against the cold of space, and as a guard against their engine overworking and killing them all. This is not a place for cowards. “I’ve stopped.”

“Then I’ll go.” Grantaire seems anxious to leave now, the confrontation gone out of him and replaced by a sort of animal fear; he backs up and twists the folded rag, puts it in his pocket. The kind thing would be to wave him off, put this scene aside with a dozen other strange combative half-truths.

But he hasn’t gone yet, and Enjolras’s exasperation is tempered by his curiosity. The memory of Grantaire’s soft skin lingers in his fingertips, and he is aware of how easy it would have been to change his hold to Grantaire’s throat. “You’d rile me, then flee? That hardly speaks well of your courage.”

Grantaire shifts his weight as though he’s about to turn. “You always say I contribute little to the struggle.”

Enjolras frowns; he does say that, but it’s rarely meant. “Come here.” 

“What? No.” Grantaire rallies again to the fight.

“Grantaire, come here.” His voice is a command.

Grantaire takes a slow step forward, and that is good. 

Enjolras can still hear the merry party the cockpit has made of their escape; Eponine’s laugh is wild, and he can picture her hand held fast by Cosette. “I think I can guess what you’re thinking of.”

Grantaire is a statue where he stands. “I think you can’t.”

“If I’m right, will you tell me?” He’s unlikely to know from Grantaire’s face.

“Shoot.”

It’s an ill-chosen word, though maybe that is Grantaire’s intent: six months ago, he took a laser wound in battle. Enjolras carefully left his bedside before he woke, but waiting made for wretched hours. “You have something you should tell me, and you don’t want to.”

“I’ve already said as much.”

“You’re afraid it will affect the whole crew.”

Grantaire nods, judicious and surprised.

Enjolras can feel the satisfaction building in him, though it wars with something he doesn’t want to name. He would rather take his triumphs where he can, when it comes to Grantaire. “I think you’re getting ready to leave us, and you haven’t made up your mind yet how you’ll confess it.”

He waits to see his blow strike, and the result is more apparent than he’d have thought. Grantaire goes pale, an easy tell. His face is otherwise unmoved, but his voice is sharp. “That’s what you think of me?”

As a goad, it maybe worked too well. Enjolras straightens. “Can you tell me I’m wrong?”

“There are times I think I’d hate you, if I liked myself any better.” It’s the barest honesty Grantaire’s ever given him. There’s no air left in the room. “You think that I’d –” 

“I’d hoped you wouldn’t.” Enjolras’s voice is quiet, implacable. “I overheard you in the station, asking the harbormaster about ships needing a mechanic. I doubted you’d go, if one of us was hurt.”

He waits. Grantaire gives him nothing.

“I’m the captain,” Enjolras says at last. “I need my crew.”

Grantaire is frozen, except when he breathes.

Enjolras counts: three.

“Do you really want to know?” he asks, and meets Enjolras’s eyes. “That wasn’t the secret; even when I dreamed about running, I knew I would never really leave.”

Enjolras nods.

Grantaire takes a step forward, and another; when he is almost flush against Enjolras, their thighs nearly brushing, he puts a hand on Enjolras’s arm. “This is my secret,” he says. “I’d rather you didn’t judge too harshly, but –” He laughs a little, rough in his throat, and he kneels.

His hands make quick work of finding Enjolras’s belt, but then they rest, and though he doesn’t lift his head again he is so clearly waiting for permission.

Enjolras’s throat is tight. This is not the epilogue he would have guessed. This is not the silence he thought Grantaire held, and he is struck suddenly by how silent Grantaire would have to be if he ever did think of this, the crew’s bunks too communal for peace of mind. He wonders if Grantaire ever pictured this as he came, and has to close his eyes.

In the too-near distance, Courfeyrac cheers.

Enjolras opens his eyes, and puts a hand on Grantaire’s head. “Go on,” he says.

Grantaire’s shoulders drop a little, relief. Enjolras wonders how long he’s kept this close. Grantaire works his belt open enough to push Enjolras’s trousers down his hips, and then Enjolras doesn’t wonder anymore: there is too much reverence in the way Grantaire kisses his cock, lips red and wanting, for it to have been anything but very long. His hand tightens in Grantaire’s curls, involuntary.

Grantaire licks him, no attention and no veneration spared; he licks again and again, and kisses him, and as Enjolras hardens, Grantaire makes a small noise. 

“You want this very badly,” Enjolras says, which is obvious. Grantaire is all enthusiasm.

He nods against the hand in his hair, and Enjolras tugs.

“Then do it,” he says.

Grantaire works his way down Enjolras’s cock, and as he swallows around him, Enjolras braces himself against the wall that is cold compared to the heat of Grantaire’s perfect mouth. Grantaire is practiced, and knowing, and he takes Enjolras deep like a man who is grateful.

The tiles can’t be comfortable under his knees.

Grantaire hums low in his throat, and bobs his head against Enjolras’s hand. Enjolras twists his fingers, and the noise Grantaire makes shivers through them both. He does it again, and again; the sound is too addictive a pleasure to ever let go.

There is little he can give Grantaire in return when Grantaire is knelt before him, and Enjolras is too selfish to ask Grantaire to stop. He’d never ask Grantaire to stop, he’d have Grantaire like this while he sat in the captain’s chair if the rest of the crew wouldn’t mind, with his legs spread wide and Grantaire’s mouth so hot around him – 

Grantaire’s mouth is so hot.

Enjolras gives Grantaire the option of his boot, all he can do with Grantaire wet and eager and Enjolras’s will too weak to slow them down. Grantaire’s hands are on Enjolras’s hips, clasped tight, and Enjolras covers one with his own palm, anchoring.

Their friends still laugh barely twenty feet and a few walls away, and Grantaire rocks up into him, desperate to get off on this unholy adoration. Enjolras presses against him further, finds a rhythm where he thrusts into Grantaire’s mouth at the same time that Grantaire grinds into his boot. The black leather is thick, meant to protect in combat, but it can't hide how fast Grantaire ruts against him, nor that his cock is so hard.

Enjolras coils his fingers in Grantaire’s dark hair one more time, and tightens his hold on Grantaire’s right hand, and as Enjolras comes, Grantaire swallows everything, frantic and indebted. His throat works until Enjolras is spent. He’s barely pulled back to set his head against Enjolras’s hip before his own shudder twice more and go still, and then all that’s left in their alcove is the sound of their erratic breathing, and the throb of the engine beneath their feet.

Enjolras carefully untangles his fingers, and when they’re free he strokes lightly at the supplicant curve of Grantaire’s neck.

Grantaire hasn’t moved his hands, and he hasn’t looked up.

Eventually, Enjolras tries, “That was unexpected.”

Grantaire huffs against his skin. “Anything for the captain,” he says. “Stress relief.”

Enjolras pulls him to standing and wraps Grantaire in his arms. Like this, Grantaire fits just under his chin. He’s quiescent against Enjolras, docile. He still hides his face. “I’d rather it were anything for a friend.”

Grantaire shrugs against him. “Are we that?” He’s subdued.

“I hope so. I’d like us to be.” Grantaire is many things, and there are few enough of them Enjolras has discovered. He wants to know them all.

Grantaire nods.

“Would you let me kiss you?” Enjolras asks, and when Grantaire nods again, he does.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Dylan Thomas's "[Because The Pleasure-Bird Whistles](http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/dylan-thomas/because-the-pleasure-bird-whistles/)," because I'm me, but at least I didn't straight up call this "The Pleasure-Bird," right? Which I was tempted to do, tbh.
> 
> Also, as you can tell from the dedications, I know a lot of really awesome people. This is poor recompense for the generosity of their friendship, but it's what I've got. Thanks for being pals, pals!


End file.
